{"id":3680,"slug":"white-sauce","title":"White Sauce","description":"White sauce is a common name (chiefly in the US and Britain) for the classic Béchamel Sauce, one of the \"Mother Sauces\" of French Cuisine. In French cooking, Béchamel Sauce is rarely used on its own; it is more often used as the base for derivitave sauces or as a binder for gratinées. Béchamel's American cousin, on the other hand, is frequently used as a finished product. White sauce is generally more highly seasoned than is Béchamel, but the procedure for making both is the same.","ingredients_raw":["¼ cup (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter","¼ cup (60 g) all-purpose flour","2 cups (480 ml) whole milk","¾ tsp onion salt","¼ tsp ground white pepper","1 tsp ground mustard seed","1 pinch fresh-ground nutmeg","1 bay leaf"],"ingredients_norm":["unsalted butter","all purpose flour","whole milk","onion salt","ground white pepper","ground mustard seed","fresh ground nutmeg","bay leaf"],"steps":["Make a white roux: melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat until the foam subsides. Add the flour and whisk together, still over the heat, for 2–3 minutes. The flour should lose its raw smell but should not brown.","Add the milk to the roux while whisking quickly but smoothly to create a smooth mixture.","Add the seasonings and cook over medium-low heat, stirring frequently. Simmer the sauce until it lightly coats the back of a spoon.","Remove the bay leaf, taste and adjust for salt and pepper, and serve."],"categories":["Sauce recipes","Recipes for sauces and condiments","Recipes using bay leaf","Recipes using butter","Recipes using all-purpose flour","Recipes using whole milk","Recipes using mustard powder"],"prep_time_minutes":null,"cook_time_minutes":null,"total_time_minutes":15,"servings":null,"yield_text":"2 cups","difficulty":"easy","source_name":"wikibooks","source_url":"https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:White_Sauce","source_ref":"4615130","authors_url":"https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Cookbook:White_Sauce&action=history","license":"CC BY-SA 4.0","license_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/","extraction_confidence":null,"content_hash":"a96d411c2fe1d790d03868c4f10fcea918ea165f11bc47dc5cf5a31ba57ac069","created_at":"2026-08-02T14:43:31Z","updated_at":"2026-08-02T17:11:31Z","notice":null,"url":"https://recipecontextprotocol.com/recipes/white-sauce"}